My first shot was acquired in poor conditions, with bad seeing and rather cold temperatures (only -8 degrees Celsius).

I’ve also observed the nebula together with my brother-in-law through the eyepiece at 60x with the 14 inch scope. Only the brightest part of the nebula, of a triangular shape and uniform luminosity, was easily detectable.

Being motivated by the previous lunar imaging session (with good to excellent seeing conditions) I’ve decided to force my luck and get to my imaging location yet another morning. This time I had my brother-in-law to “confirm” the seeing conditions at the eyepiece.

Same apparent conditions (fog, cold) but this time the excellent seeing conditions were present for only a few tens of seconds. Mostly, the value never exceeded 6/10. Yet, those very few 8-9/10 moments were enough to capture some of my very best lunar images to date, with details of 500 meters or less discernible in most shots.

November 18 was a perfect night for HR lunar images: a bit of fog near the ground, no wind, only -5 degrees Celsius and low jet stream. These factors allowed for some near-perfect seeing conditions, with a value of 7/10 most of the time, and 8-9/10 occasionally. The last time I had such conditions was almost a year ago.

First, one shot with craters Theophilus and Cyrillus being the main subjects. Craters as small as 450-500 meters can be discerned.

Lacus Mortis with crater Burg at the center, in slightly less perfect conditions:

The very interesting half-of-a-crater Fracastorius with its inner rimae; details of 500 meters and below are observable:

Giant crater Janseen with its inner rimae system, in low-angle illumination and very good to superb seeing conditions.

Crater Posidonius and the near-by areas with lost of rilles. This shot was acquired in excellent conditions, and crater of 400 meters can be detected:

The lunar South Pole area, under good seeing conditions (but only 6-7/10). Craters Clavius and Moretus and the southern mountains offer a very nice perspective of the lunar terrain:

Craters Capella and Gutenberg. Capella is the strange flower-looking crater left of center, while Gutenberg is the large lava-filled crater right of center. Note the large number of rilles crossing the frame. Craters of around 550-600 meters are present in the image.

And Copernicus in RGB with data for color from October 2015. Note the many hues inside the crater floor and rim:

Crater Janssen on the terminator; a rather hard to image target at this illumination due to the strong contrast of some crater rims:

And a Posidonius comparison between the Lunar Orbiter 4 image, back in 1967, and my own from a few days ago. “Only” 50 years were necessary for amateurs back on Earth to get close to the spacecraft resolution from half a century ago. I might still need a few more years to actually get to the same resolution (the LO4 image shows craters of around 260-280 meters), but craters of 400 meters are detectable in my image. My shot is perspective-corrected to better compare the two views; this type of processing slightly distorts my image, but the smallest details are still there.

Got another shot at the Moon last night. Good seeing conditions, but far from what I was expecting; the local conditions looked very good up until I’ve set up my telescope (low fog, no wind), but after 10 minutes at the eyepiece, the fog dissipated, and a soft breeze started. The seeing continued to be above average, but only rarely got a 6-7/10 value.

Amazingly for this period of the year, with the Sun hanging at only 27-29 degrees above the horizon, I had a few good seeing moments (for this altitude) for some H-alpha and white light imaging.

The equipment: Teleskop Service 115 APO refractor with a Lacerta wedge prism for white light imaging and a 3x barlow, and the Quark chromosphere for the H-alpha images. In both situations I’ve used the ASI 174MM camera.

First, the white light shot, showing the sunspot groups 2608 (left) and 2607 on the limb: